Pages

Monday, January 23, 2012

I Vote 4 Energy - Supporting American Energy

This is a terrific ad currently being run on television in support of American energy by the American Petroleum Institute, using the voices of voters:

Gosh, American energy. What a concept.

The American Petroleum Institute is a strong supporter of the Keystone XL Pipeline project, recently rejected by President Obama in a blatant political pander for his re-election bid.

Getting more U.S. energy from a friendly North American neighbor would reduce U.S. reliance on energy resources from less stable regions, create American jobs, while enhancing domestic energy and national security. The Keystone XL pipeline expansion would provide a significant boost to U.S. energy security, bringing an extra 830,000 barrels of oil per day to U.S. refineries— With the pipeline, our crude imports from Canada could reach 4 million barrels a day by 2020, twice what we currently import from the Persian Gulf.

Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, now in its fourth year of review, could also create 20,000 construction jobs over the life of the project. Projects like this, along with additional investment in oil sands development in Canada and expansion of pipelines and refineries in the U.S. make it possible to realize an additional 500,000 U.S. jobs in 2035.

The U.S. government's own environmental review indicated that the Keystone XL pipeline would "have a degree of safety over any other," offering a safe, practical way to bring more Canadian oil to U.S. refineries. This is good for consumers, good for U.S. jobs, good for energy and economic security and certainly serves our national interest.

It is further proof that Barack Obama has no concept of a "shovel-ready job" and why would he? He has never held one himself. If he thinks that pandering to far left environmentalists will win his re-election or stop the oil and gas industry from developing new sources of oil and gas, he is sadly mistaken. Worse yet, no one thinks he believes that - everyone acknowledges it was a purely politically motivated decision in a re-election year. Once again, Barack Obama places his own career above the needs of his country.

President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn't often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and -- beyond the symbolism -- won't even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his re-election that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.

Aside from the political and public relations victory, environmentalists won't get much. Stopping the pipeline won't halt the development of tar sands, to which the Canadian government is committed; therefore, there will be little effect on global warming emissions. Indeed, Obama's decision might add to them. If Canada builds a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific for export to Asia, moving all that oil across the ocean by tanker will create extra emissions. There will also be the risk of added spills.

Now consider how Obama's decision hurts the United States. For starters, it insults and antagonizes a strong ally; getting future Canadian cooperation on other issues will be harder. Next, it threatens a large source of relatively secure oil that, combined with new discoveries in the United States, could reduce (though not eliminate) our dependence on insecure foreign oil.

Finally, Obama's decision forgoes all the project's jobs. There's some dispute over the magnitude. Project sponsor TransCanada claims 20,000, split between construction (13,000) and manufacturing (7,000) of everything from pumps to control equipment. Apparently, this refers to "job years," meaning one job for one year. If so, the actual number of jobs would be about half that spread over two years. Whatever the figure, it's in the thousands and important in a country hungering for work. And Keystone XL is precisely the sort of infrastructure project that Obama claims to favor.

President Obama and his far left ideologues in the White House continue to destroy the oil and gas industry in our country. They do so in this case at the expense of our relationship with our neighbor, Canada. Canada will sell the oil to China and other markets overseas now instead of to the U.S. It is, indeed, insanity.